Sir Ronald Harwood, the screenwriter of 'The Pianist', is mourning his beloved
wife, Natasha, who inspired one of his books.

Sir Ronald Harwood is mourning the loss of his beloved wife, Natasha, after more than 53 blissfully happy years of marriage.

“It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Natasha died last night around ten past eight, suddenly, and with no pain,” the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Pianist said on Tuesday.

The playwright, 78, met the future Lady Harwood backstage at Chesterfield Repertory Theatre. He was a hopeful actor while Natasha, the granddaughter of a princess, was a stage manager. It was love at first sight.

“She was divinely beautiful,” he said in an interview in 1993. “All the boys were after her and I played a very cool waiting game, unusually cautious of me.”

Sir Ronald, who was nominated for an Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, published a book, Home, about their love affair which was thinly disguised as fiction.

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Her forebears were rich and titled and fled to Paris clutching jewels; his parents were the offspring of Jewish peasants who settled in South Africa.

He said they had only one argument during their marriage, about a spaghetti sauce. Typically, he used the experience as inspiration for a television play, Private Potter, starring Sir Tom Courtenay.

“The fact that we don’t row isn’t a sign of anything, that’s how we are,” he said. “There are no rules, but I think you must be friends and companions.

“I can’t see how a marriage can be happy when both partners lead separate lives, seeing each other only first thing in the morning and when they come home at night.”

“It may help in our case that we both come from immigrant backgrounds. There’s the same kind of insecurity. Another of my theories is that it’s more difficult to come from a happy marriage than an unhappy one.”

At Christmas, he organised a special screening of his film Quartet to thank all the medical staff who had been involved with treating his wife. She attended the event and was, as ever, splendid and inspiring company.